She had sent her to Miss Silver. She had said that she was fond of young people. This certainly seemed to be true. Lifting her eyes from the beaded slippers, Ray realized that the room was full of photographs of young men and women, young mothers and babies. Some of the photographs were getting old, but nearly all the people in them were young. And they were all over the place-on the mantelpiece, on the bookshelves, on a couple of small tables. Everywhere in fact except on the big plain writing-table.

Her eyes came back again to Miss Silver’s face. The small capable hands were engaged with some soft knitting. She was being looked at in the firm encouraging way which had induced so many clients to open their hearts.

‘What can I do for you, Miss Fortescue?’

‘Lady Dryden sent me.’

‘Yes, you told me that.’

‘Something dreadful has happened.’

In spite of herself her voice shook. She had meant to be quite terribly controlled and businesslike, and her wretched voice had gone back on her right at the start.

Miss Silver said, ‘Yes, my dear?’ very kindly indeed, and Ray bit her lip and burst into tears.

She hadn’t been so ashamed of herself for years. Angry too. The anger helped. She dabbed fiercely at her eyes with her glove-because you never can find a handkerchief when you want one. And then Miss Silver was offering her a neat folded square and saying,

‘Pray do not mind about crying. It is sometimes a great relief.’

Ray stopped wanting to cry. She said,

‘No-no-there isn’t time-I’ve got to tell you.’

It wasn’t crying that was going to be a relief, it was telling Miss Silver. She couldn’t get it out fast enough.

‘We’re in dreadful trouble. Lila Dryden is my cousin-our mothers were sisters. Sir John Dryden adopted her. He was only a very distant relation, and Lady Dryden isn’t a relation at all.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘She is a cousin of Lady Urtingham’s. I have met her there.’

Ray went on.

‘Sir John was a dear. He died four years ago. Lila is lovely. Miss Silver, I’ve got to make you understand about Lila. She’s lovely and she’s sweet, but she just can’t stand up for herself. She can no more say no when Lady Dryden says yes than she can fly up to the moon. She is afraid of people when they are angry and she can’t stand up to them-she just does what they want her to do.’

Miss Silver’s needles clicked. She remarked that Lady Dryden had a commanding manner.

Ray nodded emphatically.

‘She takes a lot of standing up to. Lila can’t do it. You’ve got to understand that-she can’t.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘There has been some special instance in which she has failed to do so?’

Ray nodded again.

‘Lila and I went down to stay with a great-aunt. She is an old pet. I’ve been there a lot, but it was Lila’s first visit. Bill Waring is a nephew of her husband’s-on the other side of the family, you know. I’ve known him always, but he hadn’t seen Lila before. He just fell down flat, and they got engaged. That was about four months ago.’ She paused, and added, “Lady Dryden wasn’t at all pleased.’

Miss Silver looked across the pale pink vest she was knitting for her niece Ethel Burkett’s little Josephine.

‘Was Mr. Waring not in a position to marry?’

Ray’s colour came up brightly.

‘They wouldn’t have had a great deal. But he is in a very good firm, and they think a lot of him. He has had one or two things patented. That is what he went out to America about.’

Miss Silver observed,

‘A most interesting country. Is Mr. Waring out there now?’

‘No, he has just come back. I wanted Lila to go and meet him, but she wouldn’t. I had to do it. I had to tell him that Lila was going to marry Sir Herbert Whitall in a week’s time.’

Miss Silver said, ‘Dear me!’

She gazed mildly at Ray, and drew her own conclusions from the colour in her cheeks and the brightness of her eyes. A very definite and touching interest in Mr. Waring. Warm feelings and a generous heart. A candid nature, ill adapted to concealment of any kind. She said,

‘Pray continue.’

‘He had had an accident-he had been in hospital-Lila didn’t get his letters. Lady Dryden always said it wasn’t an engagement. She never meant to let Lila marry him. Sir Herbert was a very good match-lots of money, and a beautiful old place which he has bought and done up. I was away-I’m just between jobs at the moment. There wasn’t anyone to stiffen Lila up, and before she knew where she was Lady Dryden had her trying on her wedding-dress and about three hundred people asked to the wedding.’

The needles clicked rather sharply.

‘And Sir Herbert Whitall was satisfied?’

Ray looked at her with a kind of stern anger in her face.

‘He liked it. He was that kind of man-if he could get something away from somebody else he would think a lot more of it. He collected things-ivories-frightfully old and rare. He wasn’t in love with Lila. He just wanted to collect her, and if he could snatch her away from Bill, that made it more exciting.’

‘He knew of her engagement?’

‘It wasn’t given out, but he knew all right.’

‘Miss Fortescue, you are speaking of Sir Herbert Whitall in the past tense. Has anything happened to him?’

Ray’s hands took hold of one another. She had taken off her gloves. The knuckles stood up white.

‘Yes-yes-that’s why I’ve come to you. They were all down at Vineyards, Sir Herbert, and Lady Dryden and Lila. And Bill went down to get Lila away. He went down yesterday. I tried to stop him, but he would go. I did try to stop him. And he rang me up in the middle of the night to say that Herbert Whitall had been murdered. He was stabbed with an ivory dagger. And they think Lila did it-or Bill.’ Her voice caught in an anguished gasp and went on again-‘Or Bill.’

CHAPTER XVIII

Well, she had burned her boats, and she didn’t care. Miss Silver must be blind, deaf, and idiotic if she didn’t tumble to the fact that Bill Waring was the centre of things as far as Ray Fortescue was concerned, and she wasn’t reckoning on Miss Silver being anything of the kind. By just what imperceptible degree she was passing, or had passed, from wondering why Lady Dryden had sent her on such an apparently futile errand to an almost desperate anxiety that Miss Silver should be induced to come down to Vineyards, she could not have said. The originals of all those photographs smiling from their old-fashioned frames could have told her that they too had travelled the same way.

Ray sat there and wondered at herself. She had cried in front of a woman whom she had never seen before. She had as good as told her she was in love with Bill. And she didn’t care. She had no idea why, but she didn’t care. It might have been the gentle ordinariness of Miss Silver’s manner, with its domestic background and its effect of taking the most surprising things for granted. It might have been the touch of fireside authority carrying her right away back to nursery days. It might have been the pink knitting. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She went on telling Miss Silver everything she knew. It gave her the most extraordinary sense of relief. When she had finished she felt weak, and empty, and quiet.

Miss Silver coughed in a very kind manner and said briskly,

‘And now, my dear, we will have some breakfast. Emma will have it ready for us. Fish-cakes-and do you prefer tea or coffee?’

‘Oh, Miss Silver, I couldn’t!’

Miss Silver was putting the knitting away in a flowered chintz bag. She said with great firmness.

‘Indeed you can, my dear. And you will feel a great deal better when you have had something to eat. Emotion is extremely exhausting, and Emma makes very nice fish-cakes. And perhaps you would like to wash your face.’

Ray washed her face, and it made her feel a good deal better. She also ate a fish-cake and some toast and drank an excellent cup of coffee. The horrible things which she had been on the point of accepting lost some of their substance and became incredible again. Someone in Alice through the Looking-glass had said she could believe two impossible things before breakfast. Or was it three-she couldn’t remember. What she did feel perfectly sure about was that it was much easier to believe any number of impossible things before breakfast than afterwards. There didn’t seem to be nearly so much room for them when you had had a fish-cake, and toast, and coffee.